3 ms·
> Roughly, we've been always wrong about physics and physical entities, even when we made progress, therefore we're likely wrong now (maybe less wrong but still
by borplk 8y ago
> Roughly, we've been always wrong about physics and physical entities, even when we made progress, therefore we're likely wrong now (maybe less wrong but still wrong).
This is an extremely good point and one that people very often overlook.
It applies to all sorts of different areas of life.
For example in health/safety, we have always believed many things to be safe (or at least not deadly) and found out later that they were not safe or caused more harm than anyone thought (radiation, smoking, asbestos and more). So there are likely many deadly things today that we don't take seriously and in 300 years our children will gasp when they look back.
In programming, when you are fixing "buffer overflow number 15,452" you have to understand if this bug was going to be the last one it wouldn't be number 15,452. So just like the 14,451 that came before it, there will be more to come. So you should stop for a moment to think at a higher level or consider taking steps to completely eliminate the problem at its source instead of focusing on that specific instance because otherwise that number is not going to stop growing.
In general it's very good to be able to recognise the patterns that have been consistent over a long time and appreciate that the present time is probably not that different from what came before it. Time is going to pass, your present is going to be simply added to the next person's past, and it's unlikely to magically be void of those patterns that have been persistent for thousands of years.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> This is an extremely good point and one that people very often overlook. A good point to clarify to people who think science is like religion, that it states assertions about the world and those assertions are somehow binding to reality. But that's a complete misunderstanding of what science is. The ultimate result of all of science is a bunch of heavily abstracted "we've observed that if you do this this, then that happens" statements. Newton's mechanics are a bunch of observations generalized into clean mathematical form, that turned out to be useful at predicting results of further observations. Not all observations fit it, so we added a bit more of maths and came up with Relativity. Etc. There's nothing more to that, and physics isn't first "wrong" and then "right"; it's always striving towards more accurate, more predictive models.
- bolivier 8y ago> "we've observed that if you do this this, then that happens" statements The whole endeavor of making science "map to reality" seems wholly misguided to me. Really, it's a set of predictions and outcomes. That's why the phrase "nature of reality" when applied to science irks me. Science isn't searching for the "nature of reality" and it couldn't find it even if it were. Science is about predicting the future ever more accurately.
- pif 8y ago> For example in health/safety, we have always believed many things to be safe... Please, do not mix science and pseudo-scientific journalism. Fat or sugar? Pseudo-scientific journalism will only accept a "yes" or a "no" for an answer. Science is instead made of "yes", "no", and "we don't know yet".
- Allower 8y agoDo you really think all scientists are responsible and honest? That's a dangerous dogma in and of itself.